


Up In Smoke

by gonfalonier



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Kissing, Light Feminization, M/M, Mention of pregnancy, Sexual Fantasy, Touch-Starved, Yearning, and to my surprise, complicated adult emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:22:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23326957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonfalonier/pseuds/gonfalonier
Summary: A tale of two Thomases who love the same Francis.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Thomas Blanky, Thomas Blanky/Thomas Jopson, mentions of Captain Francis Crozier/Thomas Jopson
Comments: 21
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JollyRogue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JollyRogue/gifts).



> an off-the-rails fill for [this kink meme prompt](https://terrorkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/396.html?thread=246412#cmt246412). i meant to keep it short and filthy but it got away from me.

In the grey dusk, Mr. Blanky could often be found leaning on the deck rail, gazing out over the ice as if trying to romance it. Smoking his pipe, occasionally blowing rings out into the air with the sunset pink and pale as fish flesh in the distance.

“Where’d you learn that, sir?” asks Jopson as he comes to lean beside him against the rail. “Or have you always known?”

Blanky glances over at him and then back out into the landscape. When he takes a thoughtful puff on the pipe, Jopson can feel his mind working as though casting about for the best way to tell the story. At long last he says, “You’ll not believe me, Mr. Jopson, but I learnt it from our Francis.”

“The Captain, sir?” He smiles cautiously. Old Tom has played him for a fool before (gently, of course, in good fun) and this could be leading to a joke. “No, I’ll confess, I don’t believe you. 

“I swear it, son,” the Ice Master replies, holding up a hand as if indeed swearing an oath. “I’was on the way south to the pole, when we were still in the islands along the equatorial divide. Friendly men there, so long as you were friendly in return. One of them, a slight fella like yourself —“ he pauses to give Jopson a sly smile. As expected, Jopson’s cheeks flush with an emotion he could not describe. The feeling of being flattered, except not quite. “He took a shine to the Captain,” Blanky continues. “Though of course he wasn’t Captain at the time. Wouldn’t be for a while yet. But this man, name of Mateo, that’s the only way I knew him, he liked Francis and the two spent time together while we were passing through.

“Now, the Captain, he’s never been much for a smoke, but by Royal order all us sailors are allotted an amount of tobacco, as you well know.” Jopson nods. Perhaps it’s the quality of Mr. Blanky’s voice, or the quietude that pervades the tundra here, or any number of other untenable factors, but Jopson is enthralled. He inches closer to the man to heighten the intimacy between them. This story is for him alone. “And Francis,” gruffs Blanky, “he was a shrewd man and used his ‘bac for bargaining. Used it as money, you see. And from Mateo he bought all manner of skins, fruits — he bargained for things, but he also bargained for lessons in the local tongue. We’re Discovery Service, not a warship —“ As if on cue, Cpl. Hedges, the Marine on watch duty this evening, strolls past. They all nod a polite greeting and then return to their affairs. “As I was saying: Francis wanted to bring back education, not just items for the societies and the museums.”

At this, Jopson can’t contain his sigh of admiration. “His mind…” he begins, but does not complete the thought. 

“Aye,” says Blanky. “I know, son.” And then, more quietly, “I’ve known for some time.”

Jopson turns to him and props his cheek on his elbow. Around them the great ship echoes their breaths with soft creaks of its own. Jopson asks, “Does that make two of us, sir? In the same predicament?”

A silence follows, peaceable, even serene. It’s a silence that abrogates the need for a proper response. Jopson rights himself again, reaches out, and plucks the pipe from Mr. Blanky’s fingers, light and impish as you please, and settles his back against the rail so that they’re budged up together shoulder to shoulder. Never one for smoking himself, when he tries to take a pull from the lit tobacco he draws too much in and wracks over double with coughs. 

Blanky is laughing now, that hale, robust laugh he has, always ready to burst free from his strong chest. “That should teach you, lad,” he says with a hard slap to Jopson’s back. “A common thief, you’ll never make. Give it here.” He takes his pipe back. 

Still wheezing, Jopson straightens up. He’s laughing too, between gasps. He says to Blanky, “How can you abide that, sir? It’s just awful.”

“Aye, it is, when you take in a great lot of it like a fool.” They laugh together, smiling at one another full-on. “You breathed it in like a drowning man. If you like, I’ll teach you to do it proper. Impress your mates down in the schoolyard.”

Jopson balks, now grinning wide enough to test the dry skin of his lips. The rest of Blanky’s story can wait. This lesson is far more important. He says, with a curtsey, “I defer to your expertise, sir.”

Blanky replies, “Ah,” with a shake of his head, his eyes narrowed. He points the end of the pipe’s mouthpiece toward him and smiles enough to bare his teeth. “You’re trouble, lad. Knew y’were, but now I know y’are.” The fire in the tobacco’s gone out, so the Ice Master retrieves his matchbox from his pocket. “Now, watch here,” he says and strikes a fire to light the dry shreds in the bowl. He closes his lips around the mouthpiece and draws a few puffs to spread the smoldering flame. The way his cheeks hollow and release, it makes Jopson’s mouth flood. He swallows, and then he nods to show he understands. Blanky says, “Good lad. Now. You’ll just want a bit. Only a little, now, to keep the fire going. Your aim is to make it last awhile. Long as you can.”

“Yessir.”

“So you take a little draw like so,” he demonstrates, inhaling the smoke into his lungs where he continues, strained, “Hold’t in like so, an’ then,” he exhales slowly, a thin, sweet-smelling stream. “See it?”

Jopson nods. Again he’s transfixed. He thinks on Captain Crozier and his friend in the islands. Did he teach Mateo to smoke like this? Did Mateo teach him? The question itches him until he’s distracted again by Mr. Blanky’s voice. “Might be,” the man muses, “smoke right from the source is a bit too rich for you, petal.”

Jopson grins again and makes an affronted sound. “I’m not a maid, Mr. Blanky.”

“Are you not?”

“I’ve seen the world,” sniffs Jopson. “And with our Captain, no less.”

Blanky hums as he takes another pull of smoke. “You were his choice, you know. For this expedition, here. He chose one man on this crew by hand to join us, and it was you, my boy.”

This isn’t news to Jopson -- the Captain told him as much, and reminds him still every few days in conversation -- but he thrills to think of Mr. Blanky and Captain Crozier conversing, as friends, about him. His vanity piqued, he nearly brings himself to ask the man what else the Captain has said about him, but he misses his chance when Blanky speaks again.

“Let’s get your lungs warm, then,” the man says. “Before you get back to your duties as Frank’s housecat.” Jopson feels the apples of his cheeks begin to glow anew. Blanky takes another mouthful of smoke and then beckons him closer, close enough so their noses touch. He mutters to Jopson, “Breathe in,” and then begins to exhale the stuff. Jopson obeys -- of course he does -- and opens his mouth to inhale at the same moment.

It’s a kiss, is what it is. Two mouths connected by a slender ribbon of vapor. It’s been so very long since Jopson’s had a kiss, and every moment spent wanting one.

The smoke is easier this way, truly. Pleasant, even, chased by Old Tom’s low sound of satisfaction as he watches Jopson take it in. When the breath between them ends and they resume their distance, Blanky says to him, “We’ll make a man of you yet, won’t we, son.” And before Jopson can remark on that, Blanky adds, “It’s how I made a man of our Captain, after all.”

The silence between them that follows hangs heavier than the smoke or the cold. The sun has set, and all is blue and green. When Jopson blinks he can see Mr. Blanky as a younger man with clipped hair and a straight back, side-by-side with Mr. Crozier in the foremast tackle, both grinning at the prospect of adventure together. He can see the Captain’s transition from ship’s boy to sailor under the eye and hand of his friend. He can see, too, and feel in his chest the way that Blanky’s pride in Francis has twined with his longing for him and his satisfaction in having him. Jopson’s never considered it before this moment, but he now feels strongly: They’ve had each other. Indeed, how could they resist?

His voice still low and full of meaning, Blanky says to Jopson, “Well, lad. I’m for bed.”

“Had enough of this beautiful weather, sir?”

“Aye, indeed,” he barks, laughing. The air settles again between them and he adds, “A while yet before I’ll sleep. Could be you and I go over some things before then.” His upper lip curls and his nostrils flare. “Could be I teach you a bit more on the pipe.”

“Oh, I’d like that, sir.”

“Would you, now.”

And that’s the last they speak before parting ways, Blanky’s smoke trailing a thread between them.


	2. Chapter 2

In the Ice Master’s berth it’s as warm and glowing as the man himself. Yellow lamplight flickers on the walls and the low ceiling. Mr. Blanky has tacked to the wall a few cut silhouettes and one daguerrotype, in a frame, of himself and lovely Esther and all of their children, two of whom are a blur as they couldn’t sit still during the length of the lens exposure. A fine representation of the life Old Tom has waiting for him back at home, full of beauty and chaos. In the picture, Blanky’s sat in front with a restless child on either knee, the other children arranged around him, with Esther behind gazing fondly at her husband. Jopson has never longed for a family of his own -- a wife, certainly not -- but if he could be promised a love as sturdy as this, he would leap gladly into the affair. (And, lacking a father himself, perhaps it’s not Blanky or Esther he envies but the children at their sides who live in the safe harbor of that love.)

Jopson feels a nudge at his elbow and turns from the picture to see Mr. Blanky offering him a tin cup. Jopson thanks him and brings it to his lips, only to flinch away at the strong smell of liquor.

“Abstain, do you?” Blanky asks him.

“Not that, sir, so much as -- Captain Crozier, sir.” There’s more to say on that matter, the burden of secrets only Jopson bears, but he leaves off. No need troubling this man at this moment, and anyway from Blanky’s nod it’s apparent he understands quite well. He takes the cup from Jopson’s hand and pours it into the cup in his own before taking a healthy pull. It brings a smile to Jopson’s face, and he says, “Do you not worry, sir --”

“”We’re not’n earshot, lad, call me Tom in here. I’ll not have you all ‘sir’ or ‘your majesty’ when we’re finished our pleasantries.” Jopson swallows when he twigs to the implication. Blanky, now Tom, a seat on the edge of his sleeping berth and adds, “Please, now, what am I to worry about.”  
If the man’s to be Tom, a friend rather than an officer, then Jopson assumes himself to be Thomas, and as such he stands at ease. “Only,” he says to Tom, “do you not worry that drinking all that,” he nods to the cup, “and then sucking fire into your belly,” nodding to the pipe on the small shelf above the bed, “you might not find yourself combusting?” He’s smiling when he says it, and by the end he’s into a laugh. Tom laughs in turn, that great guffaw he has. The room feels even warmer, as though they’re not in the ice at all.

“Come sit with me,” Tom says. “You’re welcome here, come sit. Spend all day on your feet, I see you.”

“I’m no good at being idle, sir.”

“Mm?”

“Tom.”

“There we are. Then come sit with me and we’ll not be idle.”

The moment Thomas joins him on the bed, such as it is, Tom gets an arm around his shoulders. Long it’s been since Thomas was properly touched, and here is an embrace. It’s enough to make him gasp in and hold it, as though breathing itself will break this dream. He’s seen Mr. Blanky behave affectionately with other men on the ship, touching them to guide them through their tasks or teach them something new, and extending his hand to anyone who slips out on the ice around them. Thomas likes to think his ears closed to the more scurrilous gossip, but it seems that every other man on _Terror_ has a tale about enjoying the attentions of Old Tom in a store room or behind a stanchion or over an empty barrel down in the hold. Perhaps that’s why Lt. Irving scrambles to avoid the man in the ship’s passageways.

Under Tom’s touch, Thomas grows loose, supple, like worn leather, and it’s nothing for Tom to guide him into a kiss with a finger curled under his chin. A proper kiss, no distance between their lips, and no pipe-smoke to mask the flavor of their mouths. Thomas’s hand settles on Old Tom’s knee, since he cannot say aloud, _Thank you. Please. More._

How Thomas loves to be kissed. His last kiss of this sort was back home, just before shipping out, when he and his dear friend Harlan locked the storehouse of the bakery and said farewell to one another until completion. Harlan begged to use his mouth on Thomas, but no, no, they could not stop kissing, not for a moment, or Thomas was sure he would expire, and then who would dress Mr. Crozier on the expedition? Some bumbler? Some child? Oh, no. Best to keep kissing instead.

Tom’s still wearing his woollen gloves from his time aboveboard. Thomas pulls away so he can take a hand and strip the glove from it, then press it to his own cheek. Their gazes meet in the golden light of the room.

“Tom?” he asks.

“What is it, son?”

He turns his thoughts over and over like wheat in a mill. After a moment’s silence he says, “Is this another way you made a man of the Captain?”

Tom drops his hand, but only to lay it on Thomas’s knee. “Aye,” he says. “Poor sod. He’d lose his nerve around the women. Our Frank was brave as Ulysses out at sea but once we drove to land he wasn’t but a little sparrow.” Blanky pushes himself back on the berth until he’s propped against the wall, and Thomas takes the invitation to shift, too, and settle across his generous lap. Even through all their layers of clothes, Jopson thrills at the intimacy of the contact. They are not on a ship stuck in the ice; they are not anywhere at all. They exist in a place where no one can find them and they can do as they please. Tom strokes a soothing pattern from Thomas’s knee up to his thigh and continues: “We’d all disembark and go to the flash-houses to bathe and fuck, but Francis stayed behind to dawdle on the deck. Well, I couldn’t abide it -- a man’s got to fuck, or he’ll go mad.” 

Thomas snorts out a laugh, and tips his head up to steal another kiss. He says, “There are other ways to fight madness, Mr. Blanky.”

“Christ knows he was doing enough of that. Of course, we all were. The sound of a man abusing his prick’s as common as the scratching of rats on a ship.” He jostles Thomas and smiles. “You know that, well as any.”

Thomas closes his eyes in mock dismay and says, “We do try to keep it down, sir.”

“Ah, no use.” Another kiss, this one deeper than the last, slow and filled with feeling. Tom’s hand stills on the buttons of Jopson’s coat, and together they begin to undo them.

Between exploratory kisses, Thomas ventures, “You and the Captain? Tom?”

“Right, right.” Blanky eases him out of his coat and continues once they’re resettled against each other. Behind them, on the shelf, the lamp burns on. “As I said, our Captain was a shy one around the women. They all found him charming -- the way an ugly little dog is -- but he’d go pink as a rose and decline their invitations.

“Well, I’d had enough of it. Young man grows surly after a time, and I’on’t have the patience for it, even if he is my superior.”

“You keep him in line, still. I see it. He bows to you.”

“As he should.” His next words are low and heated. “As should anyone with the first man to sodomize him.”

“Oh,” Thomas breathes out. “My God.”

“That’s what’s been on your mind, right, lad? Why you’ve been coming after me like a duck behind its mother.” Thomas tries to hide his blush, but Old Tom catches him and gets them eye-to-eye once more. “Captain’s been talking in his sleep, has he?”

“Something like that, sir, yes.”

“And you’ve come to ask if Auld Tom will give you the same sort of seeing-to.”

Thomas’s cheeks glow hot and his throat burns too. He says, “Something like that.”

“I see,” Tom says. And again, “I see you. Got a feeling, young Thomas, once we’re done here and I teach you what you’ve come to be taught, you’ll swing right back to the Captain’s skirts to show him what a strong man you’ve become.”

Tom’s goading him, and Thomas knows it. He’s no virgin boy peeping through the knothole in the fence, and Mr. Crozier isn’t his nanny-nurse. With some effort in the cramped berth, Thomas pushes himself up until he’s straddling Blanky with his knees. “Become?” he says.

“Oh, aye,” replies Blanky, baring his teeth in a grin. “Naught but a little mouse now, what I’m seeing of you.”

“A mouse,” he scoffs, affronted. “Do you often take mice to bed, Tom?”

“When they come to me looking for it, I do.”

On an impulse, feeling cheeky and playful, Jopson reaches over and snatches Tom’s pipe from the shelf. He clutches the mouthpiece between his teeth and grins, and he twines his arms around Mr. Blanky’s neck.

“Teach me more about this,” he says, his words distorted by the stem of the pipe. “Or I’ll go find someone else who will.”

“Oh, I’ll teach you,” Tom replies, smiling in kind. He takes the pipe back. “Dozy little bugger, you are. C’mere.” He once again sets the pipe aside, and then he draws Thomas into a kiss that lasts for what seems like a very, very long while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're getting there dude i promise. one of these morons has got to get his dong out sometime.


	3. Chapter 3

In the passageway outside Mr. Blanky’s berth, a few sailors have paused and cupped an ear to the sliding door to eavesdrop on the Ice Master and his companion. One catches an earful of filthy language -- “...such a bloody fat cock-spike on one as young as yourself…” -- while another is treated to a chorus of ascending gasps from whoever’s joined him in the room. A passing Marine pauses and pretends to examine his uniform strap when really he’s listening in on the heated conversation going on behind the door. It’s muffled, of course, but when the ship ceases her carrying-on from being shifted by the ice, he can just make out the words.

Within the room, the lamp has been snuffed out in favor of a single candle. Thomas finds Blanky’s eyes even more mischievous, somehow, in the low and flickering light than they were in the full.

“Show me,” he says, breaking the kiss he’s sharing with Tom, “the way you showed him. Show me just how you had him do it.”

“For that, son, I’ll need you on your knees. Can you manage it?”

“Hand me my jacket, if you please.” He folds it neatly and places it on the floor before kneeling on it. “That should do.”

Blanky regards him a moment before he says, as though speaking in the middle of a thought, “He picked you by hand.”

“Not for this, sir, I can assure you.”

They share a smile full of play and promise before Tom begins pulling down the front of his own trousers. Thomas got a head start on himself when he was still in Blanky’s lap and the man wanted to see him. The way Tom handled him has left Thomas’s prick stiff and proud, and he keeps it that way with one hand while he watches Mr. Blanky reveal himself.

His cock is just as Thomas has heard it described by the other men: sturdy; dark; curved gently to the left; lacking the drape of foreskin the rest of them have. His cockhead is broad and blunt, thick at the tip. Thomas’s mouth floods at the sight of it, at the smell, their two scents mingling in the still air of the room. Tom keeps one hand on himself, wrapped around the spearshaft of his prick, and with the other he tips Thomas’s head up by the chin. “Now, the captain,” he says, “this were his first cocksuck. I had to play the fucking patient schoolmarm to keep him from catching nerves and unmanning me. Is that how you’re wanting me to do you, as well, boy?”

In the brief moment he takes to consider it, Thomas is torn. He’d thrill to experience this the way Mr. Crozier first did, hard as it is to imagine him innocent and untested as he was then. He’d also like to show the Ice Master everything he knows. There’s small corner of his mind he allots to the sin of pride, and that’s the part that preens now at the notion that he might surprise the man with his skill.

“I’ve been larking before, sir,” he confesses. “Mostly the rich lads on the acreage back at home, for a little cash. I’d make a poor student of something I already know.”

“Well,” Mr. Blanky says, “tha learned on the teats of your fellow piglets, to be sure --” Thomas interrupts him with a scoff, which earns him a tap on the cheek, a playful warning. “Makes you a pretty sodomite, and a whore who’s’nt know his worth, but hardly a master worth the bragging, boy. Scarce even a tradesman.”

“A tradesman!” squawks Thomas. And then they both bite their lips, suddenly aware of how raucous they’ve both become on a silent ship full of gossiping men. Thomas blinks and imagines his Captain here on the floor beside him, mottled and trembling, hot with shame and drink and florid desire. Mr. Crozier, he has a mannerism of leaving his mouth agape, lips loose and tongue-tip resting on his bottom teeth, as though he’s waiting to accept a sacrament. The man in Jopson’s mind’s eye is gawping like that now in a wreath of sweet-smelling pipe smoke, stupefied by his own hunger for the man before him.

Above him, Tom makes a hissing noise, the type one makes to call for a cat to come close, and Thomas’s attention returns to the present moment. He means to cast his gaze up to Tom’s face but finds himself unable to move past the stiff, sturdy prick at his eye level. “Know how to begin with it, do you?” Blanky says to him, and Thomas leans forward to show him that, truly, he does. He’s close enough to breathe a humid exhale onto the bared helmet of the thing when he stops himself and says, “Will you tell me, Mr. Blanky, how the captain approached this task at first?”

“You tropsy little cunt,” laughs Tom. “Have you teased all your fellows like this? It’s no wonder they pay you for it, else how’d you ever cease your chatterin’ jaw?” He takes himself in hand, his palm at the base of the meat so he can use his ring and little fingers to caress his stones, a motion Thomas etches into his memory to recall when he needs it. (He hopes he’ll have frequent occasion.) “Your Francis -- well, he was my Francis at the time -- didn’t know how to come at it. Tried broadsiding it like a cob of sweet corn.”

As eager as he is, Thomas still turns his head to bury his nose against Tom’s thigh to muffle his laughter. “You must stop. You must, or we’ll never see this through.”

“Aye,” Blanky replies on the end of a laugh himself. “Aye, lad, so you’n just take your own approach, and I’ll sit here in the dark and enjoy it.”

“Here’s hoping, sir.”

Thomas has been swallowing saliva half the evening: His mouth has been watering so hard it’s drawn a tang of pain from the back of his jaw. Now that he’s ready to engage, however, he finds himself a bit parched and takes a pull from the underside of his tongue to wet down enough that he can finally take his first lick at the Ice Master’s cockhead. That’s enough to get him salivating again, a dog that smells a cooked meal. The lick becomes a kiss that grows sticky with the pearly fluid gathering at the very tip, and then he parts his lips for his introductory suck. It’s been too long since Thomas has allowed himself this indulgence. His service to the Captain, the chaos, the disasters that have plagued both ships from the ice to the illness at Beechey; Thomas has had scarcely any attention for himself. Even this act might seem selfless to an observer. For Thomas, meanwhile, it’s as much an indulgence as raspberries with fresh cream. To be alone with another man is precious enough, but behind a closed door, in the warmth of a candle, on his knees to service a handsome prick, this confluence of elements -- if it weren’t for the salt-thick fluid trickling against his tongue and soft palate, Thomas might think this a hallucination as he succumbs to hypothermia and then to death.

“There’s a lad.” Tom shifts and then returns, and when Thomas glances up he sees the man has retrieved his pipe from its shelf and is striking a match. Thomas breaks his suck for a flicker of a moment to smile, and then returns to his work, if such he can call it. Tom says to him, “If I’d’ve known this was your way, Mr. Jopson, our captain would find himself short-handed every fucking day.” If Mr. Blanky has more words to share, they disappear into his grunt of satisfaction as he takes Thomas by the chin and angles his hips up to deepen the stroke of his cock.

Thomas himself is rapidly losing perspicacity. His thoughts are being pressed out of his skull by the weight of the yard in his mouth, and with his thoughts go his worries as well. What’s to worry about? Here in the dark with a warm, good man. Thomas breathes in the scent of smoke, both burnt and unlit tobacco, the wool of Tom’s trousers, and the smell of his skin. It isn’t all lovely, but what on earth is?

The tip of Blanky’s prick bears down against the back of Thomas’s tongue, opening and closing the gate to his throat in the rhythm Tom’s set. Thomas pants through his nose to keep from keening loud enough to bring the marines upon them thinking there’s some distress. “Been too long,” Tom mumbles, and Thomas, by way of agreement, coughs. “Been too long, so don’t expect much from Auld Tom tonight, my lad. A thousand fucking apologies.” Thomas can’t parse what that means, not while he’s swallowing the trunk of a fat cock, so he doesn’t try. Instead he feels, an action which requires no thought at all. He feels the roll of Tom’s prickshaft against the sensitive flesh of his lips, the edge where they go from red to pink. He revels in compressing the hot, smooth head against his palate with the back of his tongue, juicing it and swallowing again and again and again.

Tom exhales a plume of smoke and then taps the bowl of the pipe against Thomas’s cheek. He says, “Steady now. Coming on.” And so he is. In a haze, Thomas recalls the way the man stroked his balls in their sack, and so he clumsily brings his own hand up now to try to recreate the move. He takes hold of Blanky’s tight stones just in time to feel them tighten further and then release their load. The first spurt of the stuff, Thomas gags on and coughs and it drips messily from his lips, but the rest he catches on his tongue. He knocks his head back to swallow with tears burning in his eyes.

They pant together, with Thomas reluctant to pull away from the warm weight still resting on his tongue, even if it’s beginning to recede on its own. Tom, ever intuitive, pushes the heel of his hand to Thomas’s forehead and guides him back so he can replace one mouthful with another: the stem of his pipe. Grateful, Thomas bites on the ivory, sucks in a bit of smoke and lets it drift back out once he slackens his lips. He sees the appeal of a good smoke now. He might seek one out for himself once they’ve conquered the Passage.

“You’re all right,” says Mr. Blanky. In the time that Thomas has been returning to his senses, Tom has put himself away. A pity. Thomas would frame that prick like an artwork and hang it on the wall. He tugs the pipe from his mouth and confirms to Tom, “I’m all right.” 

Tom nods in return, glances at the pipe in Thomas’s hand and says, “You like that, do you? The smoke in it. The t’bac.”

Thomas smiles with his lips still abuzz. “It’s bloody awful, sir.”

In return, Tom grins lazily and leans in to steal the pipe back from Thomas’s hand. “Come up here,” he says. His voice is warm, lost its ragged edge. When Thomas joins him again on the narrow berth, they kiss, and Tom savors the taste of himself. They part, take a breath, hold each other’s gaze in the near-dark. “Bloody awful, is it,” echoes Tom. "You sound like him, there. Francis. He couldn't stomach it either." He already has a hand on Thomas’s chest, guiding him down onto his back when he adds, “Keep telling and telling myself, this is the last time I'll extend my hospitality to an impertinent, jumped-up little shit.”


	4. Chapter 4

The lower the light, Thomas finds, the darker the deed. He’s still tasting humid flesh and pipe smoke when his head meets Blanky’s pillow. Releasing its tallow in black plumes, the candle has nearly spent itself, the glow reflected in Tom’s clever eyes. Thomas folds his hand around the back of Tom’s head and pulls him in for a truly wanton kiss.

Now that his own pressing need has been seen to, Tom’s lips move slow and easy against Jopson’s. Tom is a wolf, even on his best behavior, but for the moment he’s been tamed, and Thomas pets the back of his neck as one would a loyal old hound. They’re positioned so Jopson’s knees are parted and Old Tom’s kneeling up between them with his hands on Thomas’s thighs. It’s nothing for Thomas to envision Captain Crozier like this; it’s no leap of the imagination at all.

“You’re thinking it,” Tom says to him, “aren’t you, lad.”

“Did you have him like this, sir?”

Tom flicks a hand out to chuck him under the chin. “What’ve I said about it, hey? Rank stops at the introduction of prick to mouth.” Thomas’s cheeks burn, but Tom continues, “I did have him like this, since you ask. On his back and gawping up at me. I was a younger man then, as was he, and though he’d only just gotten a mouthful of juice out of me he was ready for a poke in the hole and I was ready to give it to him.” He casts Thomas a half-smile. “I’m afraid that’s all behind me now.”

“That’s a shame,” says Thomas, smiling back. It thrills him from cheek to prick to think of the Captain receiving Mr. Blanky into him. Would he do the same for his steward, if his steward were to ask? Thomas prides himself on knowing every crick and crack of Francis Crozier’s life, but this is a line he’s never dared approach. For himself, Thomas likes all manner of larks. He’ll receive and be received, he’ll tumble about with no aim at all. It’s a challenge on a ship, that sort of playing with friends, but he takes it when he can. Tom here, Old Tom with his whiskers and his broad hands, he’s as much a friend as Thomas has ever had, connected as the two of them are by the closest friend of all.

“How did he take it?” he asks Mr. Blanky.

“What, lad, his tea?”

“Oh!” Thomas’s hand glances out to smack the man’s cheek in reproach, a move with which he’s becoming rather comfortable. They grin at each other and then Thomas’s head hits the pillow again and Tom’s hands continue to roam over his clothed backside. “You know my meaning. Awful old man.”

“His fuck, you mean,” he answers back with a scratch in his voice that makes Thomas throb. “You’d like to know if our captain takes it easy or if he kicks up a fuss.”

“Which is it?” Thomas asks. “How should I behave for you?”

There’s a silence then, between the two of them, but Thomas’s desire does not cool in it. He watches the Ice Master’s face, watches him close his eyes and reminisce on his middie days with Mr. Crozier. A fine, strong memory it must be indeed, for Tom grabs him boldly on the arse. “Behave how you like,” he tells him. “I’ll have you as a kitten as well as a spotted hyena. But you should know that our Francis has never given up nary a breath of himself without bickering for it first.” They share a laugh at that, at their captain’s stubborn disposition. Thomas finds he quite likes the notion of subduing the man, not with violence but with coaxing placations, the way one might settle an anxious horse. _None of that now, sir,_ he might say. _We’ll have you done square before you know it._

“No good at bickering, I’m afraid, Mr. Blanky.”

“Then I shall have an easy time of you.”

“You’ve had me quite easily already,” he chides. “And quiet, at that.”

“Aye,” says Tom as he works to shinny the waist of Thomas’s trousers down to bare his backside. This feels risky, far outside the bounds of reasonable deniability. At least on his knees Thomas could have proposed that he was seeing to a flaw in the Master’s inseam. “Most men don’t mind it in their mouth, now. It’s this bit where they have their trouble letting themselves indulge.”

Thomas wriggles on the berth until he’s comfortable, until being folded on his back no longer impedes his quickening breath. “Never had a problem with it,” he confesses. “I take to it myself at times when I’m alone.”

“That right?” Tom’s been acquainting himself with the newly naked flesh of Thomas’s arse and thighs, the tender, seamed underside of his stones, but now he pauses at looks thoughtfully to Thomas’s face. “There’s an act I’d pay my bit to see.”

Thomas sniffs. “Worth more than a bit, sir.”

“Course you are.” Tom’s hand resumes its roaming, drawing ever closer to the split between the two cheeks. “You’re no cheap bit of cunny, are you.” He spreads his hand out across Thomas’s tailbone so the tip of his little finger digs into the top of the crevice. “A hand on your prick and a hand to fuck. Christ, lad. God’s bloody wounds.” 

Thomas is as hot as the golden-blue flame of the candle burning through its fuel of waxy fat. His cock is heavy as a cudgel-bone where it’s lolling on his belly; he’s restless with a crawling lust. His head rolls on his neck as he seeks sensation nearly anywhere, and his eyes fall deliriously on the image of Mr. Blanky with his children, a reminder of the man’s virility, and he entertains a wild fantasy of being filled with a child himself, two or three even, planted there by Old Tom under the eye of Captain Crozier. An arrangement, then, for Tom to give what Francis cannot, and for Thomas to grow heavy in middle and chest, tended to in the heat of his expectancy by these two men whom he serves and who serve him in turn.

When he blinks his way out of the illusion, Tom is gazing down at him lasciviously. “Lost you, my boy.”

“ _Mmh._ Quite the contrary.” He finally takes his own yard in hand, ready to bring about his own crisis before his frustration overpowers him and he loses his momentum. With his other hand he takes Tom’s wrist and draws it to his own mouth so he can suck his thumb in to wet it. When he releases it he challenges, “You’ve not even had me yet.”

The smile that earns him from Tom is sharp and laced with menacing promise. Tom nods to where Thomas is fondling himself and says, “You just see to that, young man, and I’ll look after the rest of you.” He wets his thumb further with a suck of his own and then wastes no time rubbing the pad of it against Thomas’s arsehole. “The Captain,” he rumbles. “He didn’t have nearly your restraint. Impatient sod, he was. Demanding, too, and without your charming blush.” That’s when Tom chooses to push in. Thomas grunts and bites both his lips in against a much louder sound. It’s been far too long since he’s had another man touch him. “There it is,” Tom soothes him. “There’s what she needs. Velvet cunt, you’ve got.” He turns his thumb just inside where it’s snug inside its ring. “Expensive.”

“And here you are,” Thomas pants, “getting it for free.”

A snarling chuckle from Tom and then they both go quiet a while, each focused on their worrying hands. Thomas has both knees slung up over Tom’s shoulders, and the position has his prick-juice spattering onto his own face as he pumps himself. Delicious. Depraved. He stifles a wild giggle at the idea of being found out like this, by any of the crew, but particularly the Captain. What of this scene would make him the very most apoplectic? His trusted steward -- _“He picked you by hand.”_ \-- debased, wet, fucked, and all of his own will? His trusted friend, complicit in the act! Whom would he envy the most?

The burn of Tom’s thumb is only just to the side of pleasurable, and Thomas has a feeling the man knows as much. He keeps the intrusion shallow, where the sensation is most acute, although Thomas is accustomed to taking his own fingers quite deeply when the mood strikes him. Clever man that he is, Tom has himself in up to the knuckle, the widest stretch, that he knows Thomas will still be feeling tomorrow as he goes about his duties and his leisure. Perhaps he’ll hiss, and perhaps Captain Crozier will ask him what the matter is, and perhaps Thomas will answer him that it’s nothing at all, nothing to be concerned with. And perhaps, all the same, Francis will somehow know.


	5. Epilogue

There was no light left in Mr. Blanky’s berth to put himself right in the shaving mirror, and so Thomas relied on the Ice Master’s word that he wasn’t looking disheveled. Well-used. They had kissed again, deep and full of meaning, full of understanding, and then parted. After the balmy warmth of love in a tight room, Thomas feels the chill far more acutely as he picks his way back to his own station.

The Captain has not needed him in the interim. At this hour he’ll either be up still and melancholy, perusing his maps as though they’ll change their patterns before his eyes, or asleep on his floor collapsed in a pool of his own piss. One’s as likely as the other. Neither lessens Thomas’s fondness.

Home again. His berth feels overlarge, his bed stony, his blankets meager. In the dark he thinks of Crozier as a younger man, a gnashing little feist, red-faced and terribly Irish, squabbling like a hen perturbed as Old Tom -- not so old back then, but just as sturdy with his barrel chest -- held him down to give him the fuck he’d been begging for. The two of them boxing one another’s ears even as they wanted each other in the meatiest of ways. 

Tom is a satyr, and Thomas wouldn’t dare change him, but he can’t stop himself wondering how Francis might have come out differently had Thomas gotten to him then. If time were rearranged and instead of the free-spirited Tom Blanky, Francis had fallen in with midshipman Thomas Jopson. Thomas Jopson who assisted in courts martial, who heard all gossip but repeated none, who could bring a rowdy mess-room to order with a raise of his eyebrow. Had he and Francis met then; had Thomas brought him in hand and then to heel. Well. If that had happened, then today there might be less piss to mop up.

Even in these, his dreams that fly farthest a-fringe, he casts himself as Francis Crozier’s steward. There is nothing he would rather be. He does not envy Mr. Blanky and their rambunctious history together; nor does he envy the other men the Captain has entertained, Mateo at the equator, or Sir James Clark Ross. They have only ever known him. They have never served him.

Sleep is not going to come to Thomas tonight. He will suffer through the day and catch himself up when the sun sets again, a phenomenon growing increasingly distant the farther north they cut. For now, he lies content with his own silent thoughts, scattered wide but charting toward the same central subject, the sun around which he himself makes his orbit.

When they reach the Passage, he considers absently, gazing at the ceiling, listening to the creak of the ship. When they make it through and are welcomed by the peaceful, warm Pacific, when they make landfall on some island and disembark onto the hot sand there, Thomas will be sure to seek himself out a well made smoking pipe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lost the thread a bit but i hope you're satisfied with it anyway. let me know if you need anything.


End file.
